26.1 Yes-No Questions with 有冇 jau5 mou5 III

In Grammar and Vocabulary 13.1, we learned to use 有冇 jau5 mou5 to ask whether someone actually does an activity or not.

To ask whether someone has completed an activity or not, we can put 有冇 jau5 mou5 before the verb phrase for the activity to form a yes-no question in the same way. This type of question is like Have you … ? in English (as in Have you booked seats?). Notice when 有冇 jau5 mou5 is put before the verb, we don’t usually add 咗 zo2 at the same time, although we are asking whether someone has completed an activity.

To answer the question, we can give a short answer or a long answer. We give a short answer more often. Notice when 有 jau5 or 冇 mou5 is put before the verb, we don’t usually add 咗 zo2 at the same time.

For positive answers, we can add or omit 有 jau5. When we omit 有 jau5, we need to add the aspect particle 咗 zo2. For short answers, we can simply say 有呀 jau5 aa3 for ‘yes’ or 冇呀 mou5 aa3 for ‘no’. We can also form a short answer by omitting the subject and the object in the long answer. If the verb is a separate verb, we usually keep the first syllable and omit the other syllables.

In Grammar and Vocabulary 13.8, we learned that we can use 未 mei6 to form yes-no questions that asks whether an activity has been completed yet or not. The yes-no questions with 未 mei6 are different from the yes-no questions with 有冇 jau5 mou5 we have just learned about. For the yes-no questions with 未 mei6, we expect the activity will be completed sometime and ask whether it has been completed yet or not. For the yes-no questions with 有冇 jau5 mou5, we are not sure if the activity will be completed and simply ask whether it has been completed or not.